Darren Kamp, owner of the Lucky Strike Gold prospecting shop, had never seen anything like it in his 43-year career. A huge gold nugget valued at more than 147,000 euros arrived by chance at his store, located in Geelong (Australia), an unusual find due to its dimensions.
The huge rock full of gold was discovered by an amateur in the state of Victoria, in an area known as the ‘Golden Triangle’, according to the news that the American network CNN has advanced. The boulder weighs 4.6 kilograms and the total amount of precious metal is 2.6 kilograms.
At first, nothing suggested that it was such a valuable rock. According to this information, the stone came in one piece and was very dirty. The hobbyist who found it, who prefers to remain anonymous, couldn’t see the gold inside, so he tore it in two, confirming his suspicions, Kamp says.
“When it hit my hand, my jaw dropped,” explains the owner of this establishment to CNN. Once he was cleaned up, “you could see gold coming out of the rock everywhere.” Kamp believes he has been lucky: “It was just incredible. A once-in-a-lifetime find.”
This man took it to Kamp’s store late last year, who appraised it. The businessman has been in charge of this gold prospecting business for 43 years and assures that he “had never seen a rock of this size with that amount of gold.” In fact, he says that many times people show up at his store with gold-colored stones but, contrary to what it seems, they do not contain gold.
The largest gold specimen Kamp found was a 24-ounce piece, now worth around €45,000.
To find this huge gold nugget, the prospector used a Minelab Equinox 800 detector, which cost him about $800, this seller explains, Kamp, a figure well below the later valuation he received.
In Kamp’s view, prospecting is a profitable business. A gram of gold currently costs about $63: “It’s worth looking for,” he says, because with just two bits, “you can get $200 (Australian).”
This vendor assures CNN that prospecting is booming, because his store has been selling more detectors recently. He believes that interest rates are rising and people are looking for ways to supplement their income.
It is not the first time that valuable gold nuggets have been found in the country. According to this information, in 2020, two huge nuggets worth $250,000 were found in historic gold deposits. Earlier, in 2013, another amateur explorer discovered one that was worth at least $300,000.
The discovery of rich gold deposits in the Ballarat and Bendigo regions of Victoria, Australia was very popular in the 1850s. The largest was known as the ‘Holtermann Nugget’, which weighed over 90 kilograms.
